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B.2.—Answer to the Same from Levuka.

As members of the Church of England resident in Fiji, your letter addressed to the Members of the Church of England resident in the Islands of Fiji, Samoa, and the adjacent islands of the Pacific, has been received, and also read to us by the Right Reverend the Bishop of Nelson.

We feel how difficult it is to adequately express our gratitude for the interest displayed in our spiritual welfare by His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishops of New Zealand, and particularly to the Bishop of Nelson, for the kindness and consideration he has shown in personally undertaking all the inconveniences and privations involved in so long a journey, and to parts so far removed from the ordinary track of civilization.

We have, as your Lordship wished us to do, taken counsel with the Right Reverend the Bishop of Nelson, with a view to the more permanent arrangement for the ordering of the Church of which we are members, and its ministrations among us.

After hearing the kind and welcome advice and words of the Bishop of Nelson, and considering the letter of your Lordship, we wish to express to your Lordship and the other Bishops of the Province of New Zealand our heartfelt thanks for the kindness and thought we have received at the hands of the Bishops of New Zealand, and to express our sincere desire that the visit of the Bishop of Nelson will be the harbinger of many other such visits by the Bishops of New Zealand.

Before proposing any alteration of the status of the Church of England in Fiji, it will be necessary that the members thereof in different parts of the Colony should take counsel together, and as the brief sojourn of the Bishop of Nelson does not permit this ere he leaves Fiji, it is our intention to further address your Lordship hereafter.

For the Members of the Church of England in Levuka.